TV News LIES

A dramatic increase in immigration enforcement at US airports has reportedly placed the airline industry at odds with the Trump administration as workers decline to help federal officials arrest their targets – many of whom have pending applications for visas, asylum or green cards.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) – both part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – have expanded their collaboration to make as many as three dozen daily arrests at US airports last month, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Some of the people who have been taken into federal immigration custody include a former au pair, an asylum seeker with sickle cell anemia who uses a wheelchair, and women who are married to US citizens and in the process of applying for lawful permanent residency, according to the New York Times.

“It’s not people with criminal records,” said Ghassan Shamieh, a San Francisco-based immigration lawyer who had four clients detained at airports over 10 days. “You are talking about people with legitimate pending applications.”

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Israeli forces launched a large-scale operation in the Qalandiya refugee camp in occupied East Jerusalem on Wednesday.

The Jerusalem Governorate said dozens of military vehicles stormed the camp before dawn, carrying boxes, equipment and maps.

Soldiers deployed across several neighbourhoods as home raids and searches continued.

Palestinian sources said troops raided the headquarters of the camp's Popular Committee and forcibly removed several residents from their homes.

One family was ordered to evacuate its house completely, while dawn prayers were prevented in all of the camp's mosques.

A Palestinian man was wounded after being struck by a military vehicle near the camp, suffering leg injuries. Soldiers also severely beat journalist Muhammad Sumrin while he was covering the raid and fired stun grenades at other journalists.

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As first light reaches the scattered tents and animal pens of Ras al-Ahmar in the northern Jordan Valley, the silence is broken only by the cries of thirsty livestock waiting for water that no longer comes.

Days after Israeli forces destroyed three of the Palestinian community's main water wells, residents are scrambling to secure enough water for their families, crops and animals in one of the occupied West Bank's driest regions.

For 60-year-old Ali Bani Odeh, the destruction of the wells was more than merely the loss of infrastructure. A father of four and grandfather of 14, he has spent decades farming and raising livestock to support his family in Ras al-Ahmar.

Now, like dozens of other families, he is uncertain how long they can continue living on the land without a reliable water supply.

"Water is everything for us," Ali told Middle East Eye.

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Israeli ministers and lawmakers led a march towards the Gaza Strip on Sunday, calling for the re-establishment of settlements in the Palestinian enclave.

Thousands joined the demonstratiohttps://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israeli-ministers-lead-march-calling-settlements-gazan, organised by the Nachala settler movement under the slogan, "Returning home after 21 years", referring to Israel's 2005 withdrawal from Gaza.

Nachala said at least 28 ministers and lawmakers took part, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party.

Addressing the crowd, Nachala leader Daniella Weiss said she is often asked: "What will happen to the Arabs in Gaza?"

"There will be no more Arabs in Gaza," she declared.

Smotrich told supporters: "We erased the disgrace of the expulsion in northern Samaria, and with God's help, we will do the same here in the Gaza Strip," referring to the re-establishment of settlements in parts of the northern occupied West Bank evacuated in 2005.

Ben Gvir said, "There will be Jewish settlements in all of Gaza."

"Encourage voluntary immigration [of Palestinians to other countries], send those who need it to their countries. And we return home. Gaza is ours," he added.

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Dr Mazen Rantisi, a 71-year-old Palestinian physician popularly described as the “doctor of the poor”, says he has suffered physical abuse and medical neglect since Israeli authorities detained him more than a month ago, Haaretz reported on Sunday.

The doctor, known for often waiving fees, supplying medicines and operating a clinic that serves as a refuge for low-income Palestinians, was detained in a pre-dawn raid on his home in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank on 21 June. Prosecutors later indicted him for serving as chairman of the board of the Union of Health Work Committees, a Palestinian non-profit that provides medical care to thousands of Palestinians each year.

According to the report, Rantisi told a lawyer from the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel that prison authorities withheld his regular medication for the first 10 days in Ofer prison and are still denying him one of his medicines.

His requests to see a doctor went unanswered, and a medic checked his pulse only once through a small opening in the cell door.

Rantisi also reported physical violence, saying that said the prison units raided his cell several times a week and beat detainees.

“The younger prisoners surround me to protect me, taking the beatings themselves,” Rantisi said, adding that the guards sprayed tear gas into the cell during one raid, leaving him struggling to breathe.

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An estimated 26,000 children who entered the U.S. without parents or guardians are expected to be left without independent legal representation as soon as Monday, according to lawyers who help represent them.

For more than two decades, the U.S. has been required by law to protect children who cross the border alone, because of fears that they could be easily exploited, abused or trafficked. After children cross the border unaccompanied, they are typically transferred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). A network of nearly 100 legal groups helps provide children who arrive in ORR custody with legal services, funded by Congress.

But in November, ORR stopped paying for those legal services, after lawyers declined to provide the agency with confidential information it had requested about the children. The attorneys say that information is covered by attorney-client privilege.

"The government is withholding payment for work that has already been performed in order to extract confidential information about kids, information the government has no right to," Acacia Center for Justice, the nonprofit that manages the legal services contract with ORR, said in a statement on Thursday.

ORR did not renew the contract with the network of legal providers, which expired Friday.

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